Summer Storm

Here's a bit of video from the beginning of the storm here last night. We were just heading out the door for Grant's t-ball game when we got a call that games were cancelled and we went outside to watch the clouds gather. Didn't expect to see this.

I had Jared's weather radio and Grant was listening to it. You can hear it in the background in a couple of the videos. There was a confirmed tornado that touched down in Colwich, KS, which is about 17 miles directly west of us. But I don't think this is that cloud system.

So we're watching this and the lightning and stuff in the driveway when the sirens went off, so I sent the boys in to go to the basement and I stayed outside watching the storm form. Jared got home soon after that and we watched it for a while longer and the sirens stopped. Then after they started for the second time we decided to go inside. It was really cool to watch. The sirens continued to go on and off about 6 or 8 times during the next 2 hours and the rain finally started to fall about 20 minutes after we went inside. We got about an inch and a half of rain in 2 hours and some places in the area got 3.

During a lull we went upstairs and I was looking out the back window at the clouds and they were swirling pretty close to right above us and all of a sudden the wind started blowing harder and harder. So we went for the basement again. We watched the winds ripping through all our trees. Had to be 70+ mph. It bent a metal stake Jared was using to stake our trees, but didn't break the tree itself. Later they said a microburst had come through and that's what our winds were. First time I've seen it really rain sideways instead of down. So that was our storm experience. Lots of wheat fields around the area that were in the middle of harvest and lost the rest of their crop to hail damage. Glad it didn't get any worse than that.